Title: Turning the world on its head: The virus that disrupted business as usual

Abstract:

The pandemic overwhelmed the world and turned it upside down.  Business is no more “as usual”. I identify some overlooked pandemic patterns that merit consideration and suggest approaches for dealing with development with insights into what might work better in today's world, particularly in dealing with global-scale crises. The proposed approach is rooted in notions traditionally central to the field of economic anthropology, such as the concept of exchange and "the gift," in a way that conceptually centers the concept of value and the ideal of socio-moral justice.

Biography:

Dr. Fadwa El Guindi, Retiree at UCLA, former Distinguished Professor at QU, graduated Cum Laude from the American University in Cairo in 1960. AUC in 2017 honored her as an AUC Distinguished Alumna. She holds intensive fieldwork experience in three different regions: Nubia, the Valley Zapotec, and the Arabian Gulf (Qatar). She has published 8 academic monographic books, 3 award-winning visual ethnographies, and more than 1700 research articles, many of which are published in high impact factor scientific journals, in addition to many public pieces and Op-Eds in major venues, and was interviewed globally. Her publications appeared in English, Arabic, French, Russian, Spanish, Italian, German, and Indonesian. She serves on a number of editorial boards of prestigious academic journals.

El Guindi’s expertise on the Middle East brought her to the Clinton White House, and she frequently gave lectures to diplomats assigned to the Middle East at the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State. 

El Guindi is a Fellow & Trustee at the World Academy of Art & Science, and is Associated Scientific Research at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Levant Culture & Civilization, Bucharest, Romania. She has recently been elected Member of the Scientific Council of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Levant Culture and Civilization, Bucharest Romania.  She is Co-Founding & Senior Editor of the Journal Kinship.